Swift and Exacting
by YourFairyGodfather
Summary: "'I'm fine,' she was murmuring, as Kurt—seemingly oblivious to the state of his clothing, for once—wrapped an arm around her back to keep her upright." The hazing at McKinley goes a bit beyond slushies. Artie is going to run someone down with his chair.
1. Chapter 1

Part 1 of 2 of this story.

Hello! I'm experimenting a bit with p.o.v. change in this story—it should be pretty obvious when it switches back and forth, but kindly let me know if it fails completely so that I don't do it again. This is a bit darker than my previous pieces, but I rather like how the second half is turning out so far.

I own so little, it's actually a bit sad.

* * *

Rehearsal had begun fifteen minutes ago, and Tina still hadn't arrived. The last time Artie had seen her was nearly two hours ago, just before 7th period. She'd smiled at him, waving goodbye as she ducked into math class just before the bell had rung. She'd been fine then, but it was highly out of character for her to be this late—and even more so to ignore the six texts and three calls that Artie and Mercedes had made between them.

Noting the unease of several of the kids at her absence, Mr. Schue had dispatched them to look for Tina while he worked with Finn and Puck on a complicated harmony in their newest number. Rachel and Kurt were searching all of the girls' bathrooms and Brittany and Mike were to check all of the offices (nurse, guidance, Principal Figgins), while he and Mercedes swung by the auditorium before retracing Tina's after-school route: her final class, then her locker, then the winding path to the choir room.

And then Artie heard the scream, and his blood ran cold.

Without a moment's hesitation, Mercedes grabbed the handles of his chair and ran toward the sound of Rachel's voice. Artie held fast to the armrests. This was bad. This was very, very bad. Rachel never screamed—the negative affects of screaming on the vocal chords had been the subject of one of her more recent pompous, self-important diatribes. However, Artie was certain that it had been her bloodcurdling shriek they had heard, which could only mean something horrible had happened.

As Mercedes turned the corner into the athletic wing, Artie's worst fears were confirmed. Rachel and Kurt were on the ground, pulling Tina into a sitting position. The floor around them was spattered with red, and blood coated the left side of Tina's beautiful face, matting her hair into disheveled tangles that clung to her neck. "I'm fine," she was murmuring, as Kurt—seemingly oblivious to the state of his clothing, for once—wrapped an arm around her back to keep her upright.

"We found her like this," Rachel was telling Mercedes, her voice even more rapid and anxious than usual. "She was regaining consciousness, but the cut on her hand may require stitches and it's highly likely that she's sustained a concussion and should receive medical attention." The words washed over Artie. Blood roared in his ears, his hands shaking, as he took in the harsh sight of Tina in front of him. Why wasn't anyone _doing _anything? All that blood…she needed an ambulance. Artie knew he should call, but his arms and mouth refused to work, completely disconnected from his brain. As if his whole body was paralyzed instead of just his legs.

After what seemed like years, Tina finally lifted her head and gazed at him. Her eyes were blank, as if she didn't see him at all, and Artie could do nothing but stare back in horror. Slowly, finally, recognition crept into her expression, and worry marred her features as she realized what he was thinking. "No, Artie. No, it's okay," she crooned, words slurring together. "It's paint, it's just red paint, see?" She stumbled toward Artie without warning, surprising Kurt, who quickly moved to regain a grip on Tina before she fell. Tina grasped Artie's hand with one of her own, her nails biting into his skin in her haste. "See, it's okay," she said gently, wiping some of the paint off of her cheek and holding it out for him to inspect. "It's okay, I'm okay."

Without even thinking, Artie pulled Tina roughly into his lap, wrapping his arms around her in the tightest hug he could give. He didn't realize he was crying until he felt his chest heaving against the weight of her. As if she were mindful of his need to reassure himself of her presence, Tina laid her head down on his shoulder and closed her eyes, letting him anchor her in place. And then went still.

* * *

_She was so tired. People were talking, but she wasn't listening anymore. Her eyes were closed again, and it was warm and safe there. She was so, so, so tired, and the back of her head hurt from when her body had slammed into the lockers. She was vaguely aware that people were talking to her, asking her questions, that Kurt was grasping her face with both hands, but she just wanted to sleep. Sleep was so good. Tina, they were all saying, Tina stay awake Tina wake up you have to stay awake… She frowned slightly. Why was everyone yelling at her? She opened her eyes a little and saw Artie looking down at her. He looked scared. She didn't want him to look scared, but why wouldn't he stop talking and just let her take a nap? Tee, he was saying, Tee, stay with me. Stay with me Tina, please._

_Stay. She could stay. Sluggishly, she sat up. She didn't want to, but she'd wake up if it would make Artie feel better. Struggling, she concentrated on keeping her eyes open._

* * *

Artie breathed a sigh of relief as Tina sat up in his lap. She was clearly out of it, hazy and unfocused, but at least she was cognizant enough to hear them and take directions. That had to be good, but he had no idea what to do now. Fortunately, Mercedes took charge. "All right people, we've got to get her cleaned up. I can't tell what's going on under all that hot mess—we might have to take her to the hospital, if she's really hurt." Kurt nodded. "Hold on to her," he instructed Artie, taking control of the wheelchair and pushing them down the hall. "Rachel, grab some supplies and meet us in the Cheerios's locker room. Mercedes, my locker." Both girls took off without a word.

Artie had never spent much time in the athletic wing beyond schoolwide assemblies for obvious reasons, but Kurt seemed to know where he was going. Less than a minute later, he was backing Tina and Artie into a surprisingly clean, well-lit room filled with sinks and lockers, a row of showers lining the back wall. Kurt picked the biggest one on the far right and turned on the water, being careful to stay out of the spray. "We'll have to wait for the girls," he called over his shoulder to them as he adjusted the water temperature, "but go ahead and see if you can get those boots off."

Before Tina could bend over to reach her legs and send all the blood rushing to her probably-concussed head, Artie tightened his arm around her waist. "You can do it, just let me help," he explained, when she looked at him. As gently as he could, he eased his hand under her left knee and lifted her leg, resting her boot on his armrest where she could reach the laces. He watched her fingers fumble, but eventually untie the knot. He deliberately averted his gaze from her legs, where her skirt was hiked to an inappropriate length thanks to the angle of her body in his lap. The boot Tina had been working on clattered to the floor, and Artie swallowed as he realized that he'd have to reach between her bare legs in order to reach her other boot. _She needs your help_, he chastised himself. _Not the time, Abrams. _With that in mind, he reached over and raised her right leg up to rest with her left, watching intently as she untied and pushed off the boot with slightly more dexterity than the previous one.

Finally, the girls arrived—Rachel with shampoo, conditioner, and a hairbrush; Mercedes with towels and clothes for both Tina and Kurt, as well as a hairdryer and some styling products with French names that Artie couldn't pronounce. Artie was left alone as Rachel and Mercedes took a fully clothed Tina into one shower stall and Kurt retreated into a second. Wheeling himself over to the row of sinks, he washed the paint off of his face and hands. His shirt was probably unsalvageable, but he didn't really care. He realized, with a bit of a jolt, that in all the confusion, Mr. Schue probably hadn't been told what was going on—it had been nearly twenty minutes since they had left to search for Tina.

Figuring that Brittany and Mike had probably made it back to the choir room by now, he shot Brittany a text saying that they had found Tina and were cleaning her up, and that most likely none of them would make it back to rehearsal. He deliberately didn't mention that Tina was injured, since he didn't want to cause a panic until they could assess the damage. Everything sounded okay, Artie could hear Mercedes talking over the spray of the shower—"Girl, you have enough hair to stuff a sofa"—with Rachel occasionally interjecting comments about how she couldn't scrub the paint on Tina's clothes while Tina was still wearing them, but that she'd be happy to take them home and treat the marks with the wide assortment of stain removers she had amassed over the years.

Artie looked at his face in the mirror over the sink, and was almost surprised at the hardness of his reflection. Nowhere in his expression could he find a trace of the anxiety, panic, worry, or relief he'd gone through, in that order, over the past half an hour. All he could see was anger. Cool, calculated rage, an intensity that would have been frightening if he didn't know the reason: Someone did this to Tina. He'd gotten mad on her behalf when people had thrown slushies in her face, tossed her in the dumpster, even locked her in a storage closet that one time. She'd done the same when people had mistreated him. But those incidents were nothing compared to this. For a few, horribly indescribable moments, Artie had thought…

Eventually, Mercedes would turn off the showerhead, and she and Rachel would help Tina dry off and change into a clean outfit. They'd do it again four hours later, when the nausea became overwhelming and Tina vomited up the soup that Artie had made them all for dinner, with Kurt's assistance. They would panic briefly, until Rachel googled the symptoms of a head injury and they discovered that this was par for the course. He would direct Rachel, who had never been to Tina's house before, to a spare bedroom—Kurt already knew where to go, and Mercedes had claimed Tina's bed. He would spend the entire night at her side as she slept on the couch, only letting go of her hand to manually stretch his legs every two hours. He would fall asleep just after dawn. She would press a kiss to his cheek when she woke up, head sore but far clearer than the day before. He would feel it, but think it was part of his dreams.

But this was all eventually. In that moment, Artie was alone with his reflection, vaguely listening as Kurt hummed a song he didn't know and the girls scrubbed away the last of the paint. In that moment, Artie had only one thought.

_Whichever motherfucker did this is going down._


	2. Chapter 2

Part 2 of 2 for this story.

Gracias for the great reviews, I really do enjoy reading every single one. Bouncing around the state for the next few days, so another super-fast, probably error-riddled type job in order to not keep you all in suspense.

And I apologize for the 'Artie runs someone over with his wheelchair bit' being metaphorical. While that would have been awesome, hopefully this ending won't be too disappointing.

I don't own anything Glee related, except a number of iTunes purchases.

* * *

It took seven days for Artie to target, plan, and execute a serious smackdown.

The first two days didn't really count, because he had spent them at Tina's house. Worried about the aftereffects of Tina's concussion, and not wanting to leave her alone to rattle around her huge, empty house, Artie announced over pancakes the morning after that he'd be staying the weekend. Kurt and Mercedes were instantly on board, chattering excitedly about movie marathons and pedicures and reading trashy magazines. There was a brief moment of awkwardness when everyone turned to look at Rachel, but she surprisingly eased the tension by informing them all that she traditionally spent one weekend a month on partial vocal rest, meaning that she avoided singing and excessive vocal activity and speaking at any volume louder than a hushed murmur, and given Tina's obvious and understandable need for quiet while she healed, she herself had no problem moving that weekend to the present.

Which dropped the likelihood that Mercedes would strange her by Sunday night by at least 68%.

It took until Wednesday for Artie to figure out who had attacked Tina. She had told him what had happened in whispers on Friday night as she fell asleep—she had gotten cornered by three jocks who dumped paint on her; when she had shoved the jerk in charge, he had shoved her back and she had cracked her head on the bank of lockers behind her—but steadfastly refused to tell him who had done it. He tried everything he could think of to get her to crack, but she was adamant, saying that she 'couldn't remember' and 'my memory's kinda fuzzy, seriously Artie, just drop it, please?'

They both knew she was lying. Wheelchair or not, one word from her and he'd have gone after Mike Tyson.

Artie knew once she had made up her mind, trying to force an answer out of her would only make her upset. So he didn't ask, and a few pointed looks at the others were enough to get them to toe the line as well.

Kurt helped him clean the dried paint off the wheels of his chair on Sunday, when the girls were out picking up chips and salsa.

He had, for about 2.4 seconds, considered dropping the issue like she had asked. But as Kurt pulled into the school parking lot on Monday morning, Tina reached up to tie her hair back for first period gym. As soon as Artie saw the tiny speck of red paint on the skin behind her ear, it was back on.

All Artie had to go on was "a hulking a-hole in jockwear", which didn't really help much—the Venn diagram of 'athlete' and 'psychopathic terrorist' in this school was pretty much just a circle. But Artie was patient, and he was smart. He also happened to have a plan which utilized his natural advantages without calling any unnecessary attention to himself. For three days, he watched the floor with what pretty much equated to tunnel vision. From his vantage point, he had an excellent view of the underside of everyone's footwear, and he was banking on the likelihood that Tina's assailant hadn't gone shopping for new shoes over the weekend.

Though he did make a mental note of every new pair of sneakers he saw, just in case.

Finally, just before 5th period on Wednesday, Artie spotted a flash of red on the bottom of a giant, otherwise white athletic sneaker. Heart suddenly beating faster, Artie nonchalantly followed the shoe down the hall, just to make sure his obsession with finding the culprit hadn't caused him to start hallucinating. After another minute, Artie was certain: it was definitely red paint on the bottom of the sneaker. He'd found his target.

Blake Townsend. Football player, newer addition to the basketball team, grade A asshole, known associate of David Karofsky.

Artie smiled. Dickwad would never see it coming.

* * *

It was 12:30 on Wednesday, and Puck was wicked tired. He'd had to postpone his daily nap in the nurse's office after he'd gotten caught pouring nacho cheese from the cafeteria inside some band geek's tuba—right as Principal Figgins was turning the corner. Oops. He'd gotten hauled into the principal's office and had been yelled at by a few adults for a while, something about permanent record and destructive tendencies and detention until he was eligible for retirement benefits. Whatever. It would have been fine except he'd been stuck there for so long that he'd missed lunch for real, and he'd had to terrify five different freshmen until he found one with anything good to eat in her backpack. Chowing down on the strawberry Pop-tarts, Puck slammed the door of his locker. Only to find Wheelchair Kid was sitting there staring up at him, his hands folded primly in his lap. "What do you want, Abrams?" he asked, already bored with the conversation.

Dude, even that kid's _smile_ was dorky.

"I find myself in need of some assistance that can only be described as badass," Artie stated neutrally. "I was hoping I could hire your services." Puck raised an incredulous eyebrow at him. "What kind of services?" he asked, not without amusement. Artie smiled. "Illegal decimation of property. A covert job, obviously. It would probably require at least two other people; I was thinking maybe you could convince Matt and Mike to help." Puck narrowed his eyes. "Not Finn?" he questioned. Weird. The Glee nerds practically licked the ground Finn walked on. "Not Finn," Artie confirmed. "He's a nice guy, but dumb as a bag of hammers. He couldn't keep this on the DL."

Puck tried not to crack a smile, but it was hard. Artie was definitely his new favorite dork. Sorry Tina, you're down to second place. "I don't know," he bluffed, "I'm a baby daddy now, I've got a kid to think about. I don't know that I want to risk ending up in jail for whatever you've got going on." Artie nodded. "I thought you might be concerned about that," he admitted. "So I'm prepared to make it worth your while." He pulled a small red duffel bag off of the handle of his chair and passed it to Puck. "Careful, it's fragile," he warned. Puck sneered and unzipped the bag. Inside were four unopened bottles of Jack Daniels. Puck whistled. "Damn, Abrams," he exclaimed with appreciation, "What'd you do, rob a liquor store?" The corners of Artie's mouth twitched. "Holy shit, you did rob a liquor store!" Puck fucking _loved_ this guy! "My parents needed a few bottles of wine for a dinner party they're having this weekend," Artie explained. "My chair has a tendency to set off metal detectors."

Puck reopened his locker and stashed the duffel bag safely inside. "All right," he conceded, "I'm so in. What's the plan?"

* * *

Artie waited until after the final bell on Thursday to enact the next part of his plan. Puck had assured him that Mike and Matt would definitely be in, and had even sounded excited about Artie's idea, contributing his own helpful tips and modifications. But he had also pointed out a serious potential roadblock in their way. And for that, Artie needed some professional expertise.

"Hey Kurt, wait up!" Down the hall, Kurt pivoted like a ballerina and waited for Artie to reach him, elbow balanced delicately on his other arm and hand resting artfully by his cheek. "I just talked to Mercedes," he called out as Artie approached. "The package is safe." Artie smirked wryly. Unbeknownst to Tina, the three of them had worked out a schedule for the two weeks following The Incident, wherein each day following the end of her final class, one of them would meet up with her to discuss some crisis or critical piece of gossip. And if that discussion just happened to last until Tina had safely reached the choir room... Yesterday had been Kurt's day, so Artie had been forced to wait in order to catch the boy alone.

"So, purely hypothetical question," he began, keeping his eyes straight ahead as he rolled beside Kurt. "Say that someone wanted to disable a car alarm without having the keys. Theoretically, how would one go about doing such a thing?" Kurt's pace remained steady, even if his voice did not. "Hypothetically, one would have to know the make and model of the car in order to determine if that were even possible," he replied slowly. Artie flipped open his phone and scrolled until he found the right picture, taken that morning in the parking lot. He handed the phone wordlessly to Kurt, who examined it carefully before nodding. "It could be done. A shame, too, since it's a beautiful car. If it were damaged in any way, it would be a very costly fix." He gave Artie the phone back, and Artie promptly deleted the picture. "Would it be possible, theoretically, of course, to get the directions written down?"

Kurt looked at him sharply. "Perhaps if the writer _knew_ the directions would be memorized and burned. As in 'set fire to', not just thrown out." He looked away from Artie and stated flatly, "Those aren't instructions anyone can just google. There are only four mechanic's kids in this town." Artie nodded, face serious. "Done. Hey, Kurt," he started, his tone suddenly light and airy. "What are you up to tomorrow night?" Kurt looked down at Artie, unconvinced. "Washing my hair," he replied snarkily, "why." Artie smiled brightly back at him. "I just found out that I have a doctor's consult in Columbus, so I have to cancel my plans with Tina tomorrow night. Maybe you guys could go bowling or something." He pulled out his wallet and handed Kurt a twenty dollar bill. "If you treated her to a few games, you know her, she'd insist on buying the snacks. And since she never carries more than ten dollars in cash and you forgot to stop at the ATM, you'd probably both pay with your legally traceable credit cards or something."

Kurt carefully folded the $20 and tucked it into his bag. "Does Tina know you've crafted us an alibi?" he asked, straightening the strap of his bag. Artie blinked innocently. "I don't know what you're talking about," he replied blithely. "Let's get to the choir room, we're almost late."

* * *

Friday night at 10:15, Artie sat hidden between two SUV's in the parking lot of Lima's sole movie theatre. Mike had been tailing the offending vehicle ever since basketball practice had ended that afternoon, and had given the others the all clear just before ten. Artie watched as the guys made short work of the car—slashing the tires, pouring sugar in the gas tank, coating the engine with ammonia-based cleaner, and replacing the windshield washer fluid with motor oil. Puck insisted that Artie stay close to Matt's car, just in case they had to make a speedy getaway. Artie couldn't fault his logic—wheelchair guy kind of stood out, especially when committing acts of vandalism—but he insisted on being the one to thoroughly drench each of the seats, seatbacks included, with thick, red paint.

He'd thought it was an awful color three years ago when his parents repainted the house. Now, he was just thankful that the leftover paint had still been sitting in the garage after all that time.

Puck made sure that the two vehicles were running, and that Artie and his chair were strapped in the car and ready to go, before adding the final touches to their destructive masterpiece: three smashed windows and a frowning face painted on the rearview mirror. Then quickly and silently, he ran back to Mike's car, giving Matt the ok to take off before jumping in the passenger seat.

Half an hour later, Artie sat in his bathroom, washing the slight traces of red paint out of his brand new gloves. Matt had driven him straight home, laughing the entire way, and Artie had thoroughly charmed all of his parent's dinner guests with the hilarious tale of the evening he had just spent schooling his jock friends at DDR. As the last of the paint flecks swirled down the drain, he again caught sight of his reflection in the mirror.

He could really get used to that wicked smile.


End file.
